Stocktaking in Multiple Sites

When you have multiple hospitality sites within your portfolio, there is a lot to manage, and naturally, some tasks fall further down the list of priorities than others. This is especially the case in more recent times, where resources becoming increasingly stretched. Those businesses that are fully optimised will be the ones that continue to survive and thrive. One key activity that should not be forgotten is stocktaking. Having good stock controls embedded within your business allows you to have greater visibility and transparency at any one time. The result of having these within your business allows you to have more control and flexibility in stock management, the reduction in stock waste, prevents needless overspending, allows you to accurately project potential net spend on stock purchasing. Having control over all of these helps you to work towards maximising your profits. Multi-site stocktaking can sometimes feel daunting. A lot of moving stock across multiple sites can lead to a lack of visibility over individual site performance, creating profit leakage and room for problems to manifest themselves. In this article, we will explore some of the fundamental advantages of multi-site stocktaking and how they can help you maximise your profits. Optimising resource allocation When operating across multiple sites, a one size fits all approach will not work. Through optimising resource allocation, you are able to deliver the right products for each site to minimise wastage and accommodate demand. Analysis Analysing your portfolio performance is fundamental to identifying any sites that are consistently underperforming. As part of this, you will need to benchmark sites internally from a single consolidated point. Those with higher levels of consumption will naturally be those which are performing best and measuring this will also help prevent stock shrinkage, obsolescence and instances of employee theft. Regular stocktaking Regular stocktaking comes with an array of immediate gains, including more visibility over your business and less waste (the hospitality sector wastes £5.1 billion of food and drink each year). But the long-term benefits are also rewarding. Discrepancies are identified earlier thus allowing timely corrective action to arrest arising issues. Regular stocktaking, especially when conducted in a professional and consultative manner where training is involved, upskills whole site teams and embeds a positive culture that results in sustained long-term profitability.

Understand profit/loss and managing cashflow In hospitality, food and drink supplies can move quickly, and it is easy to quickly lose track of profit, meaning any cash flow decisions won’t be informed with the essential real-time insight. Regular multi-site stocktaking also allows you to understand exactly what profit or loss your business is making. This real-time information is invaluable in informing crucial business decisions. Visualise your Top/Bottom sellers by Profit/quantity Visualising your top and bottom selling products can make you more competitive. We help by producing reports and managing groups to a portfolio level. This allows you to focus on the best-performing products, as well as perhaps dropping low-value products, improving your proposition to your customers. It also helps our clients negotiating position with suppliers when they can visualise the volume sold of high-performance products across the whole portfolio. Understand supplier price fluctuation Keeping your margins right is key. However, your supplier relationships aren’t just two-way. Your first-tier suppliers will have a whole supply chain of their own, and if the price fluctuates further down that chain, you could end up feeling the effects. Multi-site stocktaking will help you understand any price fluctuations and the knock-on effect it is having on your business. Consider pricing & benchmark Keep ahead of the curve by considering your pricing and benchmarking with a competitive price that will still work to maximise your profits. Multi-site stocktaking will inform you of consumption, so considering the price of your top and bottom performing products could make all the difference. To increase your performance, you could also design promotions; the stocktaking process will help you create these cost-effectively by accounting for the cost and calculating the return. View and assess the success of internal KPIs and targets The key to multi-site stocktaking is consolidating all the information to provide a clear overview of cost, risk, and forecasting so you can maximise your profitability and plan for the future. The data will need to be compared against your businesses KPIs and targets to get a clear assessment of your success. Stay legal Finally, our multi-site stocktaking will help you stay legal. Reporting accurate stock valuations is required to comply with financial reporting standards. Besides being legal, this helps clients understand their true cost of sales and profitability. Conclusion There is no way of maximising profitability if you do not have a clear view of what’s going on in your business and risks can quickly arise. However, regular multi-site stocktaking is an important process that will ensure that your business is not only profitable but also sustainable. Ultimately, your visibility over real-time data and forecasting will enable you to make the most informed decisions about your business. If you’d like to find out about how we can help you to maximise your profits through regular multi-site stocktaking, please get in touch.